Explain ontological pluralism

ChatGPT said:

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are many ways, kinds, or modes of being — that “to be” does not mean the same thing for everything that exists.

It’s a rejection of ontological monism, the idea that being has one single, uniform sense that applies equally to rocks, numbers, minds, gods, and fictional characters. Ontological pluralism says instead that there are different ontological domains, each with its own logic of existence.

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1. Classical Background

The idea goes back to Aristotle.
He said “being is said in many ways” (to on legetai pollachôs). For instance:

• A substance (like a tree) “is” in one way — it exists independently.

• A quality (like greenness) “is” in another — it exists in something.

• A relation (like larger than) “is” in yet another.

So even though all these are, their “being” isn’t identical in meaning. This is the seed of ontological pluralism.

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2. Modern and Analytic Developments

In contemporary philosophy, the term “ontological pluralism” was revived especially by Kris McDaniel, Jason Turner, and others.

They argue that:

• The existential quantifier (“∃x” or “there is”) might not have one meaning.

• Instead, we could have different quantifiers for different domains of being — e.g.

  • $∃_p$: there are physical things

  • $∃_a$: there are abstract things

  • $∃_f$: there are fictional things
    — each representing a distinct mode of existence.

So rather than saying “everything that exists exists in the same way,” pluralists allow for many ways of being that cannot be reduced to one overarching ontological framework.

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3. Continental and Metaphysical Resonances

In continental thought, the theme of ontological pluralism takes more experiential or metaphysical forms:

• Heidegger distinguishes between Sein (Being itself) and Seiendes (beings), which implies different “disclosures” of being.

• William James’ pluralistic universe, Deleuze’s multiplicity, and Latour’s actor-network ontology all reject the idea of a single metaphysical register — instead affirming a plurality of real modes of existence.

• Stengers and Haraway also work pluralistically, treating different practices and beings as having their own ontological commitments that must be respected rather than subsumed.

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4. Implications

Ontological pluralism shifts philosophy from what exists to how things exist and under what regimes of being.
It implies:

• No single metaphysical structure can encompass all reality.

• Different sciences, cultures, or species may engage with different ontologies, not just different “beliefs about” one shared world.

• Reality itself might be ontologically heterogeneous, not just epistemically or linguistically diverse.

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5. Critiques

• Ontological monists argue that pluralism confuses different kinds of entities with different ways of existing.

• Nominalists think we can explain apparent plurality by language-use or conceptual schemes, without multiplying “modes of being.”

• Others worry that pluralism risks collapsing into relativism — if everything has its own way of being, how can they relate or conflict?

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6. In Short

Aspect	Ontological Monism	Ontological Pluralism
Meaning of “exists”	One and the same for all things	Varies across kinds of beings
Ontology	Unified domain	Multiple modes/domains of being
Exemplars	Quine, Spinoza	Aristotle, Heidegger, McDaniel, Deleuze
Focus	What exists	How beings exist, in what mode

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Would you like me to explain it more from a metaphysical angle (e.g. Deleuze/Heidegger), or a logical/analytic one (e.g. McDaniel/Turner)?

You said:

Can beings be entirely different and unrelated, without any shared qualities at all?

ChatGPT said:

That’s an excellent and very deep ontological question — one that touches the limits of what “difference” can even mean.

Let’s unpack it carefully.

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1. The Short Answer

If beings were entirely different and unrelated, with no shared qualities, it’s doubtful we could even say they were “beings” in the same sense — or that they could relate, interact, or even be compared.
Total difference would collapse into incommunicability and unknowability.
So, from most philosophical perspectives, some minimal commonality — even just “being” itself — is required for anything to be intelligible as a being.

But ontological pluralism pushes right up against this edge: it asks how much difference can exist before relation becomes impossible.

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2. Why Absolute Difference Seems Impossible (Within Thought)

If two “beings” had no shared features, predicates, or ontological frame, then:

• They would not even exist within the same category of sense — not two beings, but two unrelated “somethings” that don’t even coexist in a shared horizon.

• There would be no concept, language, or logic that could apply to both.

• To call both “beings” would already presuppose some shared ground (the concept of being itself).

Thus, most metaphysical systems — even pluralistic ones — rely on a univocal horizon of Being, however thin, that allows things to differ within it.

This is why Heidegger, for instance, says that Being is not a being but the condition for the disclosure of beings. Without that common openness, difference has no stage to appear on.

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3. But There Are Philosophers Who Push Further

Some strands of thought do try to imagine radical, incompossible or disjunctive realities:

• Leibniz’s possible worlds: each world is internally complete but shares no causal relation with others. Yet they all exist in God’s mind — a meta-horizon.

• Deleuze: difference in itself precedes identity — being is differential, not grounded in sameness. Yet this difference still occurs within a plane of immanence.

• Meillassoux and speculative realism: attempt to think a “world-without-us,” a realm utterly indifferent to human correlation. Still, it’s “thinkable” only insofar as we posit it — so there remains a minimal relation.

So even the most radical thinkers concede at least a formal or minimal relationality — otherwise the term “being” ceases to apply.

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4. Ontological Pluralism’s Resolution

Ontological pluralism doesn’t say beings are utterly unrelated — it says:

• There are different modes of being,

• but these modes are not fully reducible to one another,

• and yet they coexist and can intersect through translation, mediation, or miscommunication.

So rather than absolute incommensurability, it posits heterogeneous but overlapping ontologies — multiple registers of existence sharing some minimal grammar of “being-thus.”

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5. The Limit Case

If beings were absolutely different — with no shared horizon — we would face a non-ontology, a chaos beyond being, or what some mystical or apophatic traditions call the ineffable or the void.

At that point, we’re no longer talking about ontological pluralism, but about the dissolution of ontology itself — the idea that “being” doesn’t bind or even exist as a shared concept.
This is closer to Gnostic or negative theological territory than to philosophical pluralism.

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6. In summary

Question	Response
Can beings be entirely different and unrelated?	Only if “being” itself loses any common meaning — at which point they aren’t “beings” in the same sense.
What does pluralism allow?	Many modes or domains of being that differ but remain partially communicable or translatable.
What lies beyond that?	Radical incommensurability — the unthinkable, or non-being.

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Would you like me to trace how this limit case — where beings cease to share even “being” — shows up in Gnosticism, Deleuze, or Heidegger? Each of them approaches this question very differently.

You said:

Yes

ChatGPT said:

Excellent — this is one of the most revealing places to trace how “pluralism” meets its own annihilation.
Let’s move through Gnosticism, Heidegger, and Deleuze in that order, because each pushes the problem of “shared being” toward a different kind of rupture.

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1. Gnosticism — the fracture of Being itself

In Gnostic cosmology, difference isn’t just a variety within being — it’s a split in the order of existence itself.
There is the pleroma (the fullness, the divine realm) and the kenoma (the void, the fallen world).
These aren’t two regions of one ontological continuum — they are two incompatible realities.

• The pleroma is perfect, whole, and self-contained.

• The material world is not just different, but ontologically corrupt, a mistake or imprisonment.

To exist here is to have fallen out of Being.

In other words:
→ Being does not hold together.
There is no shared horizon across which pleromatic and material entities could be compared.
Communication between them — revelation, gnosis — happens only as a kind of ontological breach, a wound in the fabric of worlds.

So in Gnosticism, beings are not plural within one world, but worlds themselves are plural and incompatible — a cosmic ontological pluralism that has broken its own backbone.

That’s why many interpreters call Gnosticism ontological dualism taken to the point of rupture.
What it reveals is that total difference means alienation as the basic structure of being.

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2. Heidegger — difference as disclosure and withdrawal

Heidegger begins with Aristotle’s insight (“being is said in many ways”) but radicalizes it:
he asks what allows anything to appear as a being at all.

His answer: Being (Sein) is not one of the beings (Seiendes), but the clearing, the open region (Lichtung) in which beings show up.

This means:

• Beings differ, but they do so within a shared openness.

• However, Being itself is not stable; it withdraws as it reveals.

Heidegger calls this the ontological difference — between Being and beings — and it’s the limit condition of any pluralism.
Plurality is possible only because Being allows different “epochs” or “disclosures” of itself (Greek physis, medieval ens creatum, modern objectivity).
Each epoch is a worlding — a way in which being happens.

But these worlds are not utterly separate; they are successive and overlapping unfoldings of the same withdrawing source.

So for Heidegger, absolute incommensurability is unthinkable — not because everything is the same, but because all differences presuppose an open region of revealing.
Even the most alien mode of being still takes place within that openness.

Still, Heidegger gestures toward a kind of abyssal pluralism:
if Being withdraws completely — if there is a total forgetfulness of Being — then the world becomes technological, flattened, without ontological depth.
At that point, difference ceases to disclose anything; it becomes mere variation inside a void of sense.
That’s a kind of ontological nihilism.

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3. Deleuze — difference as generative, not comparative

Deleuze takes the idea of difference and flips it entirely.
For him, difference doesn’t presuppose identity — it produces it.
There are no pre-given beings that share qualities; there are only processes of differentiation, intensities, flows, and singularities that give rise to forms.

In Difference and Repetition, he writes that “difference is that by which the given is given.”
So the world is not composed of many beings that differ — it’s composed of difference itself, continually actualizing into beings.

From this angle:

• Total difference is not impossible — it’s the very engine of reality.

• But difference is not a gap between things; it’s a productive field — a plane of immanence on which all singularities arise.

This is why Deleuze can affirm ontological pluralism without collapsing into incommunicability:
everything is different, but all difference is of the same plane.
That plane — the immanent field of becoming — is what substitutes for Heidegger’s “Being.”

In contrast to Gnosticism’s broken worlds, or Heidegger’s withdrawing Being, Deleuze’s ontology is continuous but differential.
It’s a pluralism of processes, not substances.

The paradox is that his system depends on an ultimate univocity of Being — everything, no matter how different, is in the same sense: as a mode of becoming.
So the maximum pluralism is paradoxically also a maximum unity — univocity without identity.

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4. Where the Three Meet

Thinker	What holds beings together?	What threatens that relation?	Limit of pluralism
Gnosticism	Nothing — worlds are split	Material imprisonment	Being itself fractures
Heidegger	The clearing (Lichtung)	Forgetfulness of Being	Ontological nihilism
Deleuze	The plane of immanence	Re-imposition of identity	Univocity collapses into chaos

So you can think of these as three thresholds of difference:

1. Gnostic — Difference as absolute fracture (dualism → alienation).

2. Heideggerian — Difference as ontological relation (disclosure → withdrawal).

3. Deleuzian — Difference as immanent genesis (becoming → multiplicity).

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5. A closing thought

Your question — whether beings can be entirely different — exposes the paradox that ontology can’t fully account for its own boundaries.

Every attempt to think absolute difference either:

• posits a hidden unity (as in Deleuze’s immanent field),

• postulates an enabling condition (Heidegger’s clearing), or

• splits being itself (Gnosticism’s rupture).

The moment you say “both are beings,” you’ve already admitted something in common — even if that “something” is only the abyss they share.

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Would you like me to extend this into how ontological pluralism becomes political in contemporary thought — e.g. how Latour, Stengers, or Haraway transform this metaphysical question into one about coexisting worlds (humans, animals, machines, spirits, data)?